Why Healthcare Is Finally Moving To The Cloud
When I started in this industry, the idea that we would put patient information in the cloud was an absurdity. How on earth could anyone justify putting the most sensitive information in our personal lives somewhere other than a locked cupboard, in the safety of a hospital? We would never dream of letting paper patient charts leave the hospital or clinic, so why would we let them leave simply because they are electronic?
Historically, security was tied to proximity and direct control, nowhere more so than in healthcare. Only four years ago, half of all healthcare leaders agreed – they had no desire to implement a cloud solution for clinical applications and data. So, what will be the evolution of cloud in healthcare enterprise and medical informatics? To understand the future, it is worth looking at the past.
The long march to the digitization of clinical information started in 1971 when aerospace giant Lockheed launched the first CPOE system at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, California. Not long after, the VA became one of the first health systems in the world to implement a computerized patient record system to unify patient information across multiple hospitals, concretely working towards the golden promise of electronic systems for managing patients.
Various companies have since created additional modules and added to this alphabet soup of software: Pdoc, RCM, CDS are just some of the acronyms we have become used to in healthcare. This patchwork of disparate systems that power the complexity of healthcare has become the backbone of information flow in an industry powered by information and responsible for the safety of our fellow human beings.
Half a century later we finally have widespread adoption of EHRs in the United States, though the underlying technology behind these systems has unfortunately remained the same. EHRs of today are largely digital remakes of paper charts, just as many early motion pictures were merely plays captured on celluloid. And while we have succeeded in designing digital versions of the paper chart, we have not yet acknowledged that designing for digital transformation requires rethinking the way tools can be used. Finally, at the end of the second decade of the 21st century, we are at the precipice of a sea change in this underlying infrastructure – driven in large part by the rapid maturity of cloud technology itself.
Hospitals today are facing an unprecedented amount of change. Regulation, changing customer expectations, an evolving workforce, rising operating costs – a list that would be long and daunting for any industry, but particularly so for one in which stability and risk aversion have rightly been a central pillar. As with any organization today, the role of technology amidst all this change is a key consideration for healthcare leaders. After all, even Roger Federer would not be able to win Wimbledon with a wooden racquet today.
Due to the timing of the government’s Meaningful Use incentives, most hospitals in the United States have only just completed their transition from paper records to EHR within the last few years.
